If you plan on getting your master's degree in criminology, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #130 in the country in terms of popularity. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
For its 2024 ranking, College Factual looked at 4 schools in the Great Lakes Region to determine which ones were the best for criminology students pursuing a master's degree. Combined, these schools handed out 80 master's degrees in criminology to qualified students.
Choosing a Great Criminology School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of criminology for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality criminology program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of master's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their master's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
Other Factors We Consider
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How much a school focuses on criminology students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other criminology students want to attend this school to pursue a master's degree.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How much debt criminology students go into to obtain their master's degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized criminology related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for criminology students working on their master's degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Criminology Master's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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Featured Criminology Programs
Learn about start dates, transferring credits, availability of financial aid, and more by contacting the universities below.
Gain the management, leadership, data analysis and budgeting skills you need to advance in the criminal justice field with this online master's from Southern New Hampshire University.
Indiana State University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a master's degree in criminology. Indiana State is a moderately-sized public university located in the small city of Terre Haute.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the criminology program earn about $48,497 in the first couple years of working.
Any student who is interested in a master's degree in criminology has to take a look at Bowling Green State University - Main Campus. BGSU is a fairly large public university located in the fringe town of Bowling Green.
Students who graduate with their master's from the criminology program report average early career earnings of $44,554.
The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of the rest of our data about colleges.